Auckland's Ascot apartments were a pretty strange place in the mid-1980s, when my mate Paul and I took up residence there. Big trucks graunched up Newton Road through the night. Periodically, the night would be rent with a scream as the LPG hose came adrift at the service station opposite. A youth worker who lived there was hauled out one day on child sex charges, and we fancied that at least one female resident was paying the rent in kind, direct to the fat man from the letting agency.

And then there was Gummy. Gummy always announced himself as the caretaker, but he actually wasn’t. Nonetheless, he succeeded in exercising some authority over the place simply by asserting it. He had a weirdly persuasive nature: he got people to do things they didn’t really want to do.

I once loaned him my car so he could tow his one from out by the Bombay Hills where it had broken down. He smashed an indicator light and patched it up with spray paint and insulation tape and stuck a fraudulently obtained WOF on the windscreen. I knew I shouldn't have accepted that, but I did. I felt oddly helpless.

We thought that he was also the Phantom Sweeper. On Sunday nights, during the Sunday horrors after Radio With Pictures, we would often hear someone downstairs scratching away furiously with a broom. No one ever felt like going down to suss it out.

One night, I came back from a trip to Wellington, Paul wasn’t there and I was locked out. Gummy spied me and insisted that I come over and sleep on the couch at the flat opposite, where his lived with his wife, Lorraine. We’d heard that the pair of them had been under-Grafton-Bridge-type alcoholics, and I wondered if they suffered either a mental illness or an intellectual disability, but the flat was tidy enough. He told me they owned a racehorse. I’m pretty sure I ate with them. I didn’t hang around long in the morning.

Eventually, the darkness and the road noise took its toll on my friendship with Paul. I moved out (whereupon we resumed our status as the best of mates), and the next time I saw Gummy was more than 10 years later, on the national news.

It took a little while before I could really be sure about it, but when I saw his wife, Lorraine, on TV, that settled it.

He was Stewart Murray Wilson, aka ‘The Beast of Blenheim’, the bullying brute who drugged and raped a Danish hitchhiker, terrorised his family, intimidated welfare staff and was eventually sentenced to 21 years in prison after being convicted of rape, attempted rape, indecent assault, stupefying, wilful ill-treatment of a child, and bestiality. It is thought that he offended against at least 42 women and girls over the course of 25 years.

Last night's Sunday programme, I'm fairly sure, took us back to the Ascot apartments, where the programme's protagonist Darlene Dalton, laid into him with a softball bat in retribution for his beating of Lorraine. If I was living there at the time, I have no recollection of the incident. I didn't know that the reason Lorraine had no teeth was that Wilson had smashed them out of her skull. I felt sick when I heard that last night.

But I couldn't join in what Sunday presented as the rich memory of Dalton beating him until he whimpered. It reminded me too much of what I'd seen on the news earlier: a couple of hundred citizens of Whanganui being led by Michael Laws -- so much in his element -- into public threats of vigilante violence. We all ought to be better than a man like Wilson, yet here he was, with Laws' able assistance, dragging us down to his level.

It is a simple fact that Wilson had to go somewhere after he had stayed in prison as long as the law under which he was convicted could keep him there. Whanganui will not be made the new dumping ground for perverts and psychopaths; it simply happened to be a place where none of his victims lived and a place where he could be held far from town, in the grounds of a prison, GPS-monitored under what amounts to house arrest.

But I can't quite bring myself to the belief that the system has failed by not allowing him to re-integrate into the community. It is long past the time when Wilson might have given some sign of an ability to live safely alongside others. He never did. The small, bitter taste I had years ago of his ability to intimidate and manipulate stays with me yet.

I don't live in Whanganui, let alone near the prison (which is 10 kilometres from town), but if I did I'd like to think I wouldn't be having public fantasies about killing him. And that I wouldn't be reaching for the easiest cliche: that he's not a human, he's an animal. No, he's human all right. He's a reminder of quite how dark and damaged a human can become.

We, too, are human -- and thus should we behave. Let's protect others from him, and let him live out the days until he dies, unmourned. Let us demonstrate, as we believe, that we are better than Stewart Murray Wilson.

167 responses to this post

But I couldn’t join in what Sunday presented as the rich memory of Dalton beating him until he whimpered. It reminded me too much of what I’d seen on the news earlier: a couple of hundred citizens of Whanganui being led by Michael Laws – so much in his element – into public threats of vigilante violence.

Yup – and if you expressed the opinion that being beaten to a pulp or murdered by a mob was too kind a fate for the producers of Sunday and Laws, you might well be getting a 'please explain' visit from the cops (and rightly so). Because that's how functional adults in a civilized society are supposed to roll.

Good on ya Russ. Nice to see it confirmed, once more, that you are not "Down With" the rabid right in wanting revenge for something that didn't affect you.It's all very well pointing the finger and crying Evil but all but the saintly have their darkness and in realising this we find our humility and compassion.Like that bloke said a couple of thousand years ago "If you're so friggin' good, you chuck the first rock".

That is just to close to the bone Russell, stayed the night!What it does prove (again) is that no one is all bad and non human just as the alternative is also trueMr Laws, is his record so clean he can be trusted to throw the first stone?

I suspect that, as pointed out in the Sunday Star Times, will indeed be the author of his own downfall through quickly breaking one / some of his bail conditions. He’ll be watched like an eagle, too.

I just hope that no one gets hurt if he does break any conditions.

I too, hope that he doesnt harm anyone else, but I’m not confident of it…

Can they impose restrictions upon him indefinitely? I thought parole impositions only lasted till the end of the term of incarceration?

My understanding of parole was that you are under threat of being put back in jail if you break the conditions, up until the entire sentence has passed? What threat do they hold over you if it is already completed?

I hope the guy can either go straight (seems unlikely based on all comments from those familiar with him), or if he really is incapable of that, that he does something that gets him locked up for the rest of his life….. but I cant see how that happens without victims?

As far as the pitchforkers are concerned, there’s no distinction between the “terrible few and the sad many”. The Beast of Blenheim easily falls into the Terrible Few. Unfortunately, making the Terrible Few look bigger in number than actually exists has always been a winning news formula, to the point where the dividing line between awareness and paranoia has been long since crossed.

But I can't quite bring myself to the belief that the system has failed by not allowing him to re-integrate into the community.

I haven't been following this particularly well, but I assume this is parole release - if so, how long does he have left on his sentence/under parole? Even if he gets recalled the issue is going to be when that sentence comes to an end...

I haven’t been following this particularly well, but I assume this is parole release – if so, how long does he have left on his sentence/under parole? Even if he gets recalled the issue is going to be when that sentence comes to an end…

Three years of his sentence (he's done 18 of 21) then, as Russell says, 10 years of extended supervision. I would imagine that a man who has consistently refused treatment and denied that he's got a problem will struggle to live entirely lawfully for 13 years.

Ah, found it. He will be subject to an Extended Supervision Order for 10 years after his parole expires in 2015.

Cheers. I believe that's the maximum ESO length? Given he served 85% of his sentence before parole and has been hit with the maximum ESO allowed I'm guessing he's not held in particularly high estimation by Corrections et al. So yes Matthew it feels like a "leave a bunk waiting for him" approach.

I wonder if they begin to loosen the restrictions with, say, a couple of years to go if he did manage to make it that far? Rather than suddenly "unshackle" him in society...

And perhaps we don't want to be reminded of our darker potentials or how we too could become twisted and damaged. Better to kill off those reminders or at least hid them. And yes we do need to protect people from the dark damaged humans but it seems a real challenge to do that with as you say Russell that we are better than that. Great story and an interesting insight about his ability to "intimidate and manipulate".

Hi Russell, I moved in with Paul right after you moved out. I had that same dinky little bedroom overlooking Newton Rd. I certainly remember "Gummy" and his claim to being the caretaker of the place. The scarier memory for me at those apartments was the hooker who lived downstairs from us .. she was slightly unhinged and slept with a rifle in her bed ... how do I know? One night she knocked on our door and asked for protection 'coz she thought people were after her, and foolishly (being young & naive) I went into her flat to help her, whereupon she showed me the weapon - drawing it from under the bedclothes ....

Given he served 85% of his sentence before parole and has been hit with the maximum ESO allowed I'm guessing he's not held in particularly high estimation by Corrections et al.

If we cant accept that this man could get better with incarceration, why do we bother with imprisonment? Why not shoot the fucker and be done with it , as Laws would expect? If we think this man is beast to all, then why would our intelligent friend want to bring to our attention that he experienced a human side that was caring and possibly beneficial to others for a fleeting moment in time.If anyone finds it difficult to accept , given that he wont renounce his behaviour, then we as society let him down at birth and there on in after because nobody noticed that he as a child needed help. I believe this man has earnt release, our judicial system says so.His conditions imposed are the harshest anyone in this country has ever or has yet to experience.I am sure he knows how many feel. If he must behave contrary to his conditions, then he has been told the consequence and we have proof we need better mental care.